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Republican Party Plans a Data-Driven Renaissance

The Republican Party this week admitted something many commentators have already acknowledged: When it comes to using data effectively, Democrats have often beat Republicans hand-over-fist.

The right's acknowledgement of a data analytics deficit came in the form of a Republican National Committee report written to identify and suggest fixes to party faults.

"To win campaigns, the GOP needs better data, better access to data, and better tools to make the most of that data," reads the report. "Although the RNC has always made significant investment in data, there is significant remaining work to do to ensure that our data is the best it can be."

To address the party's data issues, the RNC is planning something radical: a major restructuring of the Committee that will put a yet-to-be-created data and analytics department at the core of everything else it does, from fundraising to getting out the vote.

Helping to captain the ship during the sea change is Mike Shields (pictured above), who recently took over as the RNC's chief of staff after overseeing the National Republican Congressional Committee's campaign division during the 2012 elections.

"Right now, the center of gravity in most political party committees is somewhere between the political department and the finance department, because we essentially raise money and then spend money winning races," Shields told Mashable.

The new plan, said Shields, is to "build out from the beginning" a new department encompassing technology, analytics, data management and digital in a single department.

"And the rest of the current organization will be spokes that come off that central department so that data is at the heart of every single thing that we do," he said, later arguing the RNC has had "wonderful" data, but "what we do with the data, how we analyze it, how we share it and shape it are things that do not work well right now."

The RNC's restructuring around data seems less about adjusting the party platform based on polling and demographic information and more about refining how existing policies are pitched to the populace.

"If you're going to center yourself on data, then you have to pay attention on what the data's telling you, and a lot of that helps you target voters. It helps you communicate to voters," said Shields when asked if Republicans' policy positions would be determined by data. "And so how you go about communicating with voters, how you target voters, how you reshape the electorate, how you get more Republican voters registered and to the polls is something that is a data- and metrics-driving concept," said Shields.

Often in our conversation, Shields lauded the Obama campaign for its groundbreaking work in campaign data and analytics — he said multiple times it had "launched Sputnik," a reference to the Soviet Union's first manmade satellite. However, he says the RNC's upcoming challenge is much different than those faced in the early days of the first Obama campaign.

"We're quite often compared to the Obama campaign in terms of 'where are you versus them,' but Obama's campaign was a startup, and he was a candidate, and that's different," said Shields. "We're building this inside of an institution that's been around for 150 years, so it's more like re-centering a company like [General Electric] or another brick-and-mortar institution, re-centering its focus onto something that hasn't happened before. And we think that's a pretty big deal to do that."

When asked if he thought the Republican Party can attract somebody like Harper Reed, the outlandish and mustachioed technologist who left clothing company Threadless to become the Obama campaign's first chief technology officer, Shields said they could — as long as they show smart people they will have a voice in the party's goings-on.

"I think the way ... people look at the Republican Party and the Republican National Committee now will be different when we're done building this out, and people will be very pleased with the results," said Shields.

"There are a lot of people who think ideologically the same way as we do and agree with our principals that are in the tech sector. They have just never been drawn out of the tech sector because they've never seen it as worthwhile, that they were going to be part of an organization that valued their input and that they were going to be given the freedom to be creative and solve problems, which is ultimately what engineers like to do," he added.

Shields recognizes that whatever this new department might do, it must be connected with Republican boots on the ground to be worth anything to the party's chances in 2016.

"... If you have a very great team that solves problems and they turn over what they've learned to four people in a room in Washington, it's not going to work," said Shields. "So this has to be coupled with people who are using the information, the data and the technology, to actually go door-to-door and win votes."

How can the Republicans catch up when it comes to data and analytics? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.